Long before the first humans arrived on Not-Hoth, the planet was already inhabited by an intelligent humanoid species known as the People.
The People developed their own settlements and ways of life. At some point in their history, a planetary ice age began, gradually transforming the environment and making survival increasingly difficult.
The People were not descendants of the Sakh. Their civilization existed independently before the arrival of the extraterrestrial travelers.
Meanwhile, far beyond Not-Hoth, the Sakh belonged to an advanced, spacefaring civilization capable of interstellar travel, sophisticated medicine, and the construction of enormous spacecraft.
The Sakh Empire existed more than sixteen hundred years before the events of the original Ice Planet Barbarians storyline.
At least a thousand years before the arrival of Georgie and the other human women, a Sakh pleasure cruiser called the Se Kilahi entered the Kopan system.
The vessel was a Szentali 16-class pleasure cruiser designed for recreational travel.
Its charter described a voyage intended to allow passengers to commune with nature.
The ship carried:
162 passengers.
One pilot.
A total of 163 individuals.
The Se Kilahi was not a military vessel or a colony ship. Its passengers had not intended to establish a permanent settlement on an inhospitable planet.
They possessed advanced technology but were not necessarily trained or equipped to survive independently in a hostile wilderness.
During its journey, the Se Kilahi encountered the threat of a solar storm.
Seeking shelter, the vessel descended to Not-Hoth's surface.
The landing was not intended to become a permanent residence.
Shortly after reaching the planet, the ship's pilot suffered congestive heart failure and died.
No other individual aboard possessed the necessary ability to pilot the vessel.
With their only pilot dead, the passengers were stranded.
The survivors attempted to transmit a distress signal, but the system malfunctioned.
Their call for assistance never successfully brought rescuers.
The passengers were left on a frozen world with no reliable means of escape.
Not-Hoth's atmosphere contained substances toxic to the Sakh.
Although their ship offered temporary shelter, the passengers could not establish a sustainable existence without eventually venturing outside.
Exposure to the atmosphere caused illness and death.
A large percentage of the stranded Sakh died before the remaining survivors acquired khui.
The khui was a living symbiotic organism already associated with life on Not-Hoth.
Once established within a host, it provided the biological adaptation necessary to tolerate the planet's atmosphere and extreme conditions.
The surviving Sakh depended upon this organism for their continued existence.
Acquiring a khui was therefore not simply a cultural practice. It became the difference between survival and extinction.
The precise circumstances through which every original survivor acquired a khui are not fully documented.
The Sakh survivors were not alone.
The People already inhabited Not-Hoth, and contact between the two populations was not uniformly peaceful.
Historical accounts describe conflict between the stranded Sakh and the indigenous inhabitants.
The two populations possessed different cultures, histories, and experiences.
The Sakh came from an advanced technological civilization, while the People had developed ways of surviving in their native environment.
Neither population initially shared the same understanding of the other's intentions.
At least some interactions eventually resulted in mixed ancestry.
Not long after the Se Kilahi's arrival, two female Sakh were taken by the People, who were living in caves.
Their descendants eventually became the ancestors of the island clans.
These events established two historically connected but culturally distinct branches of Sakh-descended populations.
The surviving Sakh who remained together established the population that would eventually become known as the sa-khui.
Separated from the wider galaxy, they gradually lost access to the infrastructure that had supported their former civilization.
Their descendants learned to survive through hunting, gathering, shelter construction, and knowledge passed down across generations.
Advanced technology became increasingly difficult to maintain or replace.
Over many generations, the survivors' descendants developed a culture shaped by Not-Hoth's environment.
The khui remained central to their biology, health, and reproduction.
Their physical appearance also changed over time.
The modern sa-khui possess characteristics that distinguish them from their ancient Sakh ancestors, including adaptations associated with the khui and generations of life on Not-Hoth.
They are not an indigenous species that evolved independently on the planet. They are descendants of extraterrestrial settlers who became permanently adapted to their adopted world.
A separate lineage developed through the descendants of Sakh women and the People.
Over generations, these descendants formed distinct communities associated with the volcanic island.
The island clans developed their own cultural practices, social structures, and inherited physical characteristics.
Their ancestry connects them to both the ancient Sakh and the People.
Although they share historical roots with the mainland sa-khui, the island clans should not be treated as identical to them.
Their separation lasted long enough for significant differences in customs, appearance, and community traditions to emerge.
Detailed island history and the individual clans are covered in separate lorebook entries.
As generations passed, much of the Sakh civilization's original knowledge was forgotten.
The descendants of the survivors retained their language and fragments of ancestral tradition, but they no longer understood the full technological capabilities of their ancestors.
The Se Kilahi remained on Not-Hoth, gradually becoming buried beneath snow, ice, and surrounding rock.
Its surviving chambers were eventually known as the Elders' Cave.
For generations, the sa-khui regarded the vessel as an important ancestral location without fully understanding its technological origins.
The ship contained records, equipment, and computer systems that could reveal information about the Sakh and their arrival.
However, much of the vessel deteriorated over time.
Its surviving computer developed faults, including a malfunction that caused it to answer numerical questions with the number 287.
This error initially led the modern human arrivals to believe the sa-khui had lived on Not-Hoth for only 287 years.
The true history extended back at least a thousand years.
The ancient spacecraft survived long enough to be rediscovered and studied by the human newcomers.
Its systems helped reveal the extraterrestrial origins of the sa-khui, explain the necessity of the khui, and bridge language barriers.
Harlow and Mardok became particularly associated with studying and working on the vessel.
The great earthquake later caused severe damage to the Elders' Cave, leaving the ancient ship in a dangerous and deteriorated condition.
In the campaign's present era, the Se Kilahi is an important historical site rather than a fully operational spacecraft.
Any surviving technology must be treated according to its established condition. Ancient systems should not automatically function simply because they were once advanced.
The arrival of the Se Kilahi permanently changed Not-Hoth.
It introduced an extraterrestrial population whose descendants became the modern sa-khui.
Contact between the Sakh and the People contributed to the ancestry of the island clans.
The survivors' dependence on the khui shaped the biology, reproduction, and customs of future generations.
The gradual loss of technology transformed a group of stranded interstellar travelers into communities whose lives revolved around hunting, family, survival, and cooperation.
The history of the Sakh explains why Not-Hoth contains both ancient advanced machinery and settlements built using comparatively simple tools.
It also explains why the sa-khui, despite regarding Not-Hoth as their ancestral homeland, ultimately descend from travelers who arrived from another world.
The following historical facts must remain consistent:
The People inhabited Not-Hoth before the Se Kilahi arrived.
The Se Kilahi was a pleasure cruiser, not a military invasion vessel.
Its passengers became stranded following the solar storm, the pilot's death, and the failure of their distress signal.
Many passengers died from atmospheric toxicity before the survivors acquired khui.
The modern sa-khui descend from the surviving Sakh.
The island clans possess ancestry connected to both the Sakh and the People.
The ship's computer is unreliable when answering numerical questions.
The ancient arrival occurred at least a thousand years before the original human arrivals.
The Se Kilahi is not an intact, freely functioning starship in the campaign's present day.
Unrecorded details of the ancient period may provide opportunities for exploration and mystery, but newly discovered information must not contradict established history.